After days of fierce street fighting, PLA soldiers under General Chen Yi secured full control of Shanghai, the economic heart of China, forcing Nationalist troops to flee toward Taiwan. The fall of the city, taken with orders to preserve its factories and infrastructure, marked a pivotal step in the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, just months before Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic.
Shanghai in May 1949 was a city bracing for catastrophe. Its population had swollen with refugees fleeing the advancing People's Liberation Army, and Nationalist forces under Tang Enbo had fortified the city with barricades, pillboxes, and scorched-earth contingency plans, including proposals to destroy port facilities rather than surrender them intact.
When PLA troops entered the city in mid-May, Communist commanders under General Chen Yi issued unusually disciplined orders: soldiers were forbidden from looting and told to sleep on sidewalks rather than commandeer private homes, a calculated effort to win over a wary, cosmopolitan population accustomed to foreign concessions and capitalist enterprise. By May 26 and 27, the last pockets of Nationalist resistance collapsed, and remaining troops evacuated by sea toward Taiwan.
Shanghai's fall—largely without the destruction many feared—delivered China's most important industrial and financial center intact into Communist hands. It foreshadowed the imminent collapse of the Nationalist government, which would retreat to Taiwan by year's end, while Mao Zedong's forces prepared to declare the People's Republic of China from Beijing that October.
Key people: Chen Yi, Tang Enbo, Mao Zedong